Your Vulnerability Is Your Power

Today is Thursday, February 20, 2014.

Life will try to teach you to retreat from vulnerability. You will get hurt. After all, you are human and being vulnerable is part of the human experience. Your power as a woman lies in your ability to forgive yourself and others who have hurt you. Know there will be a possibility of hurt and stay open anyway. To be vulnerable is to know that risk exists and to give all of you, even though you know the risk. This is the only way to fully experience life. If you want to fully embrace all life has to offer, you must be willing to offer all of you. As a woman you get the choice to heal the hurt and live fully, over and over in your lifetime. Own your vulnerability, choose to heal when you get hurt and embrace all that life has to offer you –Janelle Saar

I have to admit, I have never thought of vulnerability as strength or power before, and I suspect I have lots of company in this regard.  The dictionary definition of the word vulnerable is "susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm."  Somehow, that doesn't sound very powerful to me.

It took a while for me to understand that the power comes not simply in allowing ourselves to be hurt, or when we're being hurt, but after we have been hurt, because that's when we have a chance to 1) learn something from the experience, 2) forgive ourselves and the person who hurt us, and 3) rise above the pain by not allowing it to control our thoughts, words, and actions.   Just as we must not allow anger and fear to dictate our lives, so also we must not allow hurt and pain to gain control over us.  Surely, I must have known this before, but it feels like a revelation, just now.

If you want to experience a gift, you have to unwrap it first.  If you want to read a book, you have to open it.  If you want to eat the food, you have to open the package.  There's no way around it.  If you want to experience life fully, you have to take all the protective wrappings off.   If you want to be seen, known, and loved by others for who you really are, then you have to take off the costume and the mask.  

If you are hurt – and you will be, at one point or other – then you have a chance to balance some karma, learn how to avoid the situation in the future, practice forgiveness, and gain mastery over our emotions, thoughts, words and deeds.  No matter what happens, it's a win-win situation, because we will be given a chance to grow, learn and serve others in this life.  And that's what you came here for, in the first place.  :-)